liveonearth | Entries tagged with gratitude

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more.
It turns denial into acceptance,
chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast,
a house into a home,
a stranger into a friend.

-- Melody Beattie

Crossposts: https://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1438211.html

"Times are difficult globally;
awakening is no longer a luxury or an ideal.
It’s becoming critical.
We don’t need to add more depression,
more discouragement,
or more anger to what’s already here.
It’s becoming essential that we learn
how to relate sanely with difficult times.
The earth seems to be beseeching us
to connect with joy
and discover our innermost essence.
This is the best way
that we can benefit others."
~ Pema Chodron

Crossposts: http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1426082.html

It's so much darker
when a light goes out
than it would have been
if it had never shone.
--John Steinbeck

Crossposts: http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1425889.html

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
― William Martin

Crossposts: http://liveonearth.livejournal.com/1424409.html

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi

“Everything is interconnected. Gratitude improves sleep. Sleep reduces pain. Reduced pain improves your mood. Improved mood reduces anxiety, which improves focus and planning. Focus and planning help with decision making. Decision making further reduces anxiety and improves enjoyment. Enjoyment gives you more to be grateful for, which keeps that loop of the upward spiral going. Enjoyment also makes it more likely you'll exercise and be social, which, in turn, will make you happier.”
--UCLA Neuroscience researcher Alex Korb

Four Rituals that Make You Happy:

(in summary, and as suggested by science to date)
1. Be grateful.
2. Name negative emotions.

3. Make good enough decisions.

4. Touch people.

SOURCE: http://theweek.com/articles/601157/neuroscience-reveals-4-rituals-that-make-happy

"Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you
were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed,
eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part
of it?" ~Richard Dawkins

"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe
as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves
of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."
~Carl Sagan

"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger
than we can imagine."
~Sir Arthur Eddington (1882 - 1944)

"Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us. I don't know of
any deeper spiritual feeling than what that brings upon me."
~Neil deGrasse Tyson
www.tinyurl.com/TysonSpirituality

“Spirituality is about being awake. It’s the attempt to transcend
the mundane, sleepwalking experience of life we all fall into, to
tap into the wonder of being a conscious and grateful thing in
the midst of an astonishing universe. It doesn’t require religion. ”
~Dale McGowan, author of "Atheism for Dummies"

Grace just comes: you don’t earn it, you don’t deserve it, and you can’t pay it back. It’s lila, the play that comes, as Krsna puts it in the Bhagavadgita, ‘by rare chance.’ You can say ‘thank you’ and you can offer your gifts. The best gift, of course, is yourself.
--Dr. Gopala Aiyar Sundaramoorthy
(Here: http://rajanaka.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-black-swan.html)

If
your compassion
does not include
yourself,
it is incomplete.

~ Jack Kornfield

Be grateful
for every scar life inflicts upon you.
Where we're unhurt is where we are false.
Where we are wounded and healed
is where our real self gets to show itself.

--Sara Gran, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, p 172

You gotta try your luck
at least once a day,
because you could be lucky all day
and not even know it.
--Jimmy Dean

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

--BY ROBERT HAYDEN

This Moment
is more precious
than you think.
-De La Vega

http://lynnvannoy.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/an-evening-with-don-miguel-ruiz/

The most living moment comes when
those who love each other meet each
other's eyes and in what flows
between them. To see your face
in a crowd of others, or alone on a
frightening street, I weep for that.
Our tears improve the earth. The
time you scolded me, your gratitude,
your laughing, always your qualities
increase the soul. Seeing you is a
wine that does not muddle or numb.
We sit inside the cypress shadow
where amazement and clear thought
twine their slow growth into us.
--Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

( a little about Rumi )

Let Us Give Thanks
--The Reverend Max Coots

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people.

For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.

Let us give thanks for generous friendsŠwith heartsŠand smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends, as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've had them;

For crotchety friends, sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as potatoes and so good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes;

And serious friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes; For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings; And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.

For all these we give thanks.

I am grateful for

( gratitude list for this day in 2009 )

See here scenes from the recession from the Boston Globe. It's easy to hear the words and all the media ranting about what is happening around the world. But the pictures bring it home. Construction stopped halfway. A thousand or hundred thousand applicants per job. Unsold products taking up acres of storage space. Frankly, I don't believe it when they say we'll be recovering in a year or two. I think this is the first big drop in a pattern of decline that will go for centuries. Here we go. Interesting times, indeed. There is nothing to do now but enjoy what we have....a beam of sunshine, a pretty flower, a hot shower, a good meal. Aren't we lucky? We still have internet. For now.

From the last chapter of Deep Survival, here are the actions of a survivor according to Gonzales:

( 12 survival tips )

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INTERESTING TIMES

are better than no times at all.

Entries tagged with gratitude

QotD: Gratitude Unlocks Fullness

QotD: How to Help

QotD: Because There Was Light Before

Poem OTD: Treasure the Ordinary

Rumi: Guest House

QotD: Seeking Happiness

Quotes on Religion and Spirituality

QotD: Grace

QotD: SELF-COMPASSION

QotD: Where you are wounded and healed

QotD: Luck

Poem: Those Winter Sundays

Song: I've Decided to Be Happy

QotD: This Moment

Don Miguel Ruiz got a heart transplant

The Most Alive Moment (Rumi's poem)

Thankful for Friends

Thanksgiving

Interesting Times

A wee bit more on survival